Social Work and Community Development
Policy Press is committed to ‘making a difference’ in social work and community development, with a list that aims to take forward academic thinking, and raise challenging questions for policy and practice.
Why Social Work is Important
Identity, Role and Practice
This book demonstrates that all societies require a social work presence. It symbolises the importance of a community-near professional input to human flourishing and the development of social capital. It challenges economic and political trends that corrode deeply-held human and social values.
Critical Social Work with Children and Families
Theory, Context and Practice
This fully-updated, accessible textbook considers the theory and practice of critical social work in addressing inequality and social injustice. It is essential reading for students, educators and practitioners of child and family social work.
Secrets and Silence
Uncovering the Legacy of the Cleveland Child Sexual Abuse Case
The Cleveland child sexual abuse scandal was not the scandal we thought. Beatrix Campbell shows how medical evidence of childhood rape identified by pioneering paediatricians was deemed credible but ‘dangerous’. This secret has framed policy making and public opinion and has had consequences for children, professionals, justice and the state.
The Future of Children’s Care
Critical Perspectives on Children’s Services Reform
Bringing together a range of perspectives from practice, lived experience and academia, this is an accessible and timely guide to children’s services reform. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, the book highlights both the positive and negative aspects of reform, before setting out alternative policy and practice directions.
The Best Interests Assessor Practice Handbook
Second edition
Essential reading for Best Interests Assessor students and practitioners, this fully-updated handbook gives practical advice on the legal aspects, values and practice elements of the role. It takes account of the Mental Capacity Amendment Act 2019 and the new context for practice in the Approved Mental Capacity Professional role.
Understanding Mental Distress
Knowledge, Practice and Neoliberal Reform in Community Mental Health Services
This timely analysis sets out the full impacts of policy reform, austerity and marketisation on our country’s mental health services. Rooted in the experiences of service users and providers, it provides valuable perspectives on our evolving practical and organisational responses to mental distress.
Interprofessional Collaboration and Service User Participation
Analysing Meetings in Social Welfare
This book examines how interprofessional collaboration and service user participation are challenged in multi-agency meetings, demonstrating how collaborative and integrated welfare policy is contingent on the interactional practices of professionals and service users and providing examples of best practice.
Welfare and Punishment
From Thatcherism to Austerity
From Margaret Thatcher’s first government to austerity politics, Ian Cummins traces changing attitudes to imprisonment and the social state. With fresh insights and critical thinking, he demonstrates how increasingly punitive approaches to crime and welfare have shaped the neoliberal economy and created stigma around those living in poverty.
Sharing Milk
Intimacy, Materiality and Bio-Communities of Practice
Using a bio-communities of practice framework, this thought-provoking empirical analysis explores the emotional and material dimensions of the growing phenomenon of milk sharing in the Global North and its implications for contemporary understandings of infant feeding in the US, providing new insights into a much-debated topic.
Embedding Young People's Participation in Health Services
New Approaches
This book explores how young people’s participation can be inclusively and sustainably embedded into health services. Using rich case studies of participation in practice, Brady presents a new evidence-based framework to support policymakers and practitioners to embed young people’s participation more effectively in healthcare practice.
Social Media and Social Work
Implications and Opportunities for Practice
Using real-life examples, this book enables practitioners and students to consider the ethics and assess the impact of social media on their professional conduct, and their ability to maintain public confidence.
The Approved Mental Health Professional Practice Handbook
Approved Mental Health Professionals must possess and deploy a range of skills, knowledge and values in order to make ethically complex decisions on behalf of people with severe mental health difficulties. This invaluable handbook considers these challenges and provides in-depth guidance on all key aspects of the role.